Thoughts on lenses

Tuesday, 18 September, 2007 @ 11:20 PM

What makes a photograph good? What differentiates the high art of a professionally taken image from the throw-away snapshot of the same scene taken by an amateur? Lighting, exposure, composition, these are all important factors, but it seems to me that in many cases the defining feature of a great photograph is the isolation of the subject from the rest of the contents of the image frame. This can be achieved by careful framing and choice of fore- and background, but perhaps the most striking method of obtaining this isolation is by dramatically shortening the depth of field, thus blurring out the background and/or foreground of the shot whilst keeping the subject in sharp focus. This blurred background effect is known as bokeh, a Japanese word that means out of focus.

Depth of field is influenced primarily by the lens' aperture, with a wider aperture leading to a reduced depth of field. Unfortunately, in most lenses image sharpness suffers when the aperture is fully open, and thus to keep the image sharp we are forced to stop down the aperture – thereby increasing our depth of field and impacting our beautiful bokeh. A conflict of optical effects.

A faster lens enables shooting with a wider aperture, thus giving more control over image bokeh without such a pronounced effect on overall image sharpness. Unfortunately, faster glass comes at a cost, both in expense and in weight.

The point of this rambling? Well, I am still evaluating as to whether I made the best choice in picking up my consumer-grade 18-200 1:3.5-5.6 lens the other week. It is certainly lightweight, has a very useful zoom range and was relatively affordable. The other side of the scale is the professional 70-200 1:2.8, which is very big, very heavy and more than twice as expensive. The jury is still out, and in the meantime, I'm feeling lucky so I think I'll buy a lotto ticket for this weekend.

Tuesday, 18 September, 2007 @ 11:45 PM

"Simplicity is the whole secret of wellbeing." – Peter Matthieson

Vintage Geographic

Sunday, 16 September, 2007 @ 9:50 PM

For $7 today I bought a copy of the July 1939 issue of National Geographic at the Eagle Street markets. Very different from the glossy picture-book that NG is today (not that I'm complaining, I still love the mag), it contains some very in-depth stories, including a 53-page epic by a couple who built their own 37' wooden yacht and spent three years sailing it 38,000 miles around the globe. With some variations, they followed a generally similar route to that taken by Joshua Slocum 35-odd years earlier, only with a single Atlantic crossing and a Panama Canal transit replacing Slocum's antics around the Straits of Magellan. Looking forward to reading through it more carefully.

In 1939, National Geographic cost "$3.50 a year, 50c the copy". Advertisements for Victrola record players, Rolleiflex cameras and Lockheed Electra aircraft dot the pages. The "News of the Universe" story speculates that "Rockets may some day explore higher than strato-balloons", and a 4-month round the world cruise on the maiden voyage of the M.S. Argentina Maru, taking in a "tiara of romantic ports", and a "whole galaxy of South American cities" was available from just $784 First Class! The Yankee Clipper flying boat, a "109-foot double-decked, winged hotel", christened by Mrs. Franklin D Roosevelt had just one month earlier "inaugurated regular air transport service between the United States and Europe, crossing the Atlantic via the Azores in just over 26 and a half hours."

Life was simpler back then, with not a mention being made of the first World War. July 1939 was 3 months before the outbreak of World War 2 in Europe, and a full 18 months before the US entry into the war triggered by the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941. Interestingly, the cruise voyage mentioned above begins with you being sped "over the Pacific to charming byways of Nippon."

Although very dated in design, even in 1939 the Geographic was a publication of exceptional quality. My example, while slightly tatty along the spine has held together remarkably well. It includes 24 full-colour pages, 8 being slightly cheesy "News of the Universe" paintings, with the remainder being excellent wildlife shots of Moose, Bison and Pronghorn.

Busking superstar

Sunday, 16 September, 2007 @ 9:45 PM

I was in town this morning, poking around the Eagle Street markets, where there was an amazing one-man-band busker playing some fantastic original bluesy/folksy tunes. His set-up included a foot-operated bass drum (built into his seat) operated by his left foot, tambourine for the right foot, maracas for occasional use by his left hand, mouth-organ on a shoulder frame, didgeridoo supported in a cradle near his mouth on the right and a selection of guitars just an arms reach to the side, including a superb lap slide guitar. I sat and listened to for a good 45 minutes, as did the impromptu crowd that drifted in when he started playing. At times I watched him play five instruments simultaneously, combining their sounds in a completely unique style. On finishing he received an ovation from the crowd. His name is Juzzie Smith and I bought one of his CDs. You should do the same :-)

Hearing music like this and Oka and the Red Paintings from last night really makes me happy, as it shows that the sterile, homogenized crap churned out by the labels – which seems to be all that's permitted to be played on the radio these days – isn't stifling the creativity and independence of the real musicians out there.

Lightroom crash

Sunday, 14 September, 2007 @ 9:15 PM

Aaaaaargh!!!

Adobe Lightroom, the software I use for cataloguing and cross-referencing all my photos just locked up and corrupted it's database. Damn!! My most recent backup is more than a week old, so I've lost all my ratings, edits and metadata for the last (busy) week of photo taking. At least the pics themselves are safe. Not looking forward to re-importing and going through those pics all over again though.

Bugger.

Valley Fiesta

Sunday, 16 September, 2007 @ 9:05 PM

Last night I rode down to the Valley Fiesta, a music festival that is running in Fortitude Valley this weekend. A couple of streets were closed off and they had three large stages set up. The place was packed with Emos, Goths and punky hairstyles in abundance. The first couple of bands I saw were kinda weak... a couple more years practicing in the garage after school would probably help there. Then, around 7:30 a more interesting group came on. A really out there stage set (Japanese geisha/Greek mythological motif, with 4 robed artists painting masterpieces on-stage and a beautiful topless girl with a glossy black-painted body and wearing a bizarre 9-eyed papier-mache goat's head mask writhing in the background) combined with some really raw and energetic music, lyrics and stage antics made for an act that really got the crowd going. They're called The Red Paintings, and I'm an instant fan.

I was playing with the camera's slow flash-sync settings, and I just love the bizarre motion blurs and the spooky, almost demonic look of these shots. What do you think? artistic works of genius, or just blurred and overexposed rejects?

Hippies

Sunday, 9 September, 2007 @ 11:55 PM

In the creek side park just a couple of blocks from my flat is a large organic garden, also the location of a weekly organic produce market. Crossing the sports fields on my way down there this morning I encountered a very friendly Kookaburra perched on a handrail, who sat and posed for photos for a good 5 minutes. A few minutes later I watched a family of Kookaburras being harassed by an aggressive Magpie, one of which has also been dive-bombing me every time I leave the house! Nesting season I guess.

Down at the markets, I found that today was also the day of the yearly hippie festival, with lots of dreadlocks, flowing skirts and crystal-power/massage/incense-burning tents making an appearance. More interesting than hanging out at an insurance salesman convention, that's for sure! There was a big stage set up, and starting at 10 was a series of performances from a African Woman's song group (worth hearing), a group of singers from the local Aboriginal tribe (excellent) and a traditional Indonesian dance group (on the boring side). There was probably more to see, but I decided to head for home at that point.

Rugby

Sunday, 9 September, 2007 @ 11:45 PM

The Rugby World Cup started yesterday in France, and immediately went pear-shaped for the hosts who were taken down 17-12 by Argentina. The Frenchies naturally weren't happy at all, and their #18, a big thuggish ape who looks like Charles Manson on steroids looked particularly peeved. Hehe.

I stopped into the Story Bridge Hotel on the way back from my explorations to sample the Guinness and watch the All Blacks massacre Italy 76-14, a cold-blooded public demonstration of their resolve to win us our first World Cup since 1987. Go Kiwis!!

Kangaroo Point

Sunday, 9 September, 2007 @ 10:05 PM

After some consideration, I regretfully decided to abandon my planned trip to the Speed on Tweed vintage car racing festival in Murwillumbah this weekend. It would have taken two and a half hours each way on public transport – a train ride to the Gold Coast followed two buses – not my idea of fun! I briefly thought of hiring a car, but decided to be energetic and explore some more of Brisbane by bike instead, so set off on my cycle tour.

There are plenty of interesting things going on in Brisbane. I rode into the Queen St Mall in the middle of downtown and stopped to listen to a Trinidadian busker playing a beautiful steel pan, taking me back to Carnival in Port-of-Spain two years ago. Later, I crossed the Victoria Bridge to the Cultural Centre in South Brisbane where there was an outdoor concert going on – a talent quest for 18-24 year-old solo guitarists, some of whom actually were very talented! I stayed and listened for a while, before moving along. The bike path follows the riverbank, and a short way downstream from the Cultural Centre is a relocated Nepalese pagoda, in the courtyard of which a group of homeboys were beatboxing and break dancing.

At a bend in the river is the Goodwill Bridge, reserved for pedestrians and bicycles only. Underneath the bridge on the South side of the river is the Old Maritime Museum, which fortunately was open until 10 PM. It has some nice displays set up inside, model ships, memorabilia, a working lighthouse light etc. Their prize display though, is a drydocked WWII era frigate, the HMAS Diamantina, which saw action in New Guinea before having the documents for the surrender of Nauru signed by Japanese officers on her quarterdeck in September 1945. It's in great original shape, and almost spookily gives the impression that she's just waiting for the crew to get back from shore-leave to steam off down the Brisbane river on patrol. Another amazing exhibit is a tiny 2.7m (yes, that's less than 9 foot) aluminium yacht called Happy II, which was sailed single-handedly across the Pacific by a Canadian ~~nutcase~~ adventurer some years ago.

Still further downriver I finally found the Kangaroo Point cliffs, the much-talked-about "spot" for outdoor rock climbing in Brisbane, the location of which had eluded me up until now. It's a great spot, perhaps half a km of perfect cliff face, lit from the bottom. Despite being well after dark, there were still a few keen groups of climbers picking their routes to the top. There is a park between the base of the cliffs and the river where a couple of young guys were spinning fire, giving me the chance to capture some cool long-exposure pics.

Site diary

Monday, 3 September, 2007 @ 11:35 PM

I'm not sure if anyone out there is using my RSS feed (if not... why not??!!), but I just realised that I'd been neglecting to update the link URLs properly. Should be fixed now.

I like this lens!

Monday, 3 September, 2007 @ 10:50 PM

A quick walk around the block earlier tonight afforded me the acquaintance of these two shady characters. My old lens with its relatively limited zoom range caused a lot of frustrations when taking wildlife photos, except of course in the Galapagos, where getting up close to the fauna was so easy. Being a DX format camera, a 200mm telephoto on the D200 is equivalent to a 300mm lens on a 35mm (full frame) camera, and the VR lets me shoot hand-held, even at these long focal lengths and in dim light conditions. I can't wait to get to the Tweed speed festival this weekend to see what sort of pics I can get there! I'm itching to do some more bird photography as well.

Exploring Freemantle

Sunday, 2 September, 2007 @ 8:00 PM

As I was over in WA anyway, I decided to stay for the weekend to have a look around. Perth seems like a pleasant little city. Similar in size to Brisbane, perhaps with a bit less high rise development. I like that they seem to devote plenty of space to parks and greenery.

Yesterday I took the train down to Freemantle, home of Australia's failed 1983?? America's Cup defence. Freo, as the locals call it, is definitely a scenic spot and very tourist oriented, with a busy strip of cafés and little souvenir shops running down the main street and a bustling market in the middle of town. There are a number of museums in town, of which I stopped into the shipwrecks gallery of the Maritime Museum, and then the excellent Freemantle Motor Museum, which has a quite amazing collection of rare and historic cars and motorbikes (although the bike collection is heavily ballasted with Hardly Ablesons, in which I have minimal interest). Highlights included an immaculate xk-120 Jag, a 70's McLaren Formula 2 car (replete with kiwi logo on the snout), a Bugatti Type 35, a stunning Lancia Stratos rally car (still one of the most fantastic looking cars ever made), a fabulous old supercharged Bentley 8 and one of the first 1,000 VW Beetles ever made. Oh, there was a Fiat Topolino parked in there too :-)

Definitely looking like this will be a gasoline-powered month, as I'm now looking forward to Speed on Tweed next weekend!

Expensive glass

Sunday, 2 September, 2007 @ 4:20 PM

Perhaps inspired by Friday's photoshoot, this morning I bit the bullet and shelled out on a new lens. It's an AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED. Wow, what a mouthful! It certainly wasn't cheap, but it's possibly the most flexible lens on the market and will open up opportunities for shots I just wouldn't consider with the 18-70 kit lens that it's replacing. For a start, it offers an almost three-times longer telephoto end of the zoom. Of course, a long zoom is no substitute for getting up close to your subject, but in cases where that just isn't possible (a jittery wild animal, a surfer on the water or a lava flow, for example) it will allow me to crop in much tighter on the action. Also, the addition of the Nikon VR-II image stabilisation system is claimed to allow handheld shooting at up to four stops slower than with a non-VR lens, theoretically eliminating the need for a tripod in many instances and giving sharper images in low-light conditions. It has some of the benefits of a faster (wider max. aperture) lens, but at a considerably lower cost (and weight). I'm looking forward to trying it out on some of the local wildlife!

It's been a reliable companion, but the old 18-70 will be going up on eBay, and I'm going to start piggy-banking now for a 12-24 wide angle :-)

A sense of direction

Sunday, 2 September, 2007 @ 3:50 PM

I'm writing this on the flight back to Brisbane. Last week, my employer showed considerable confidence in me and flew me across the country to Perth to direct a photo shoot for a residential development that is going up there soon. Having only art directed product shoots before, I must admit to having been pretty nervous at the prospect. Nightmares of incompetent photographers and uncooperative models filled my head for the few preceding days, but all for nothing. The photographer was a true pro, his stylist made life simple by sourcing far more props and wardrobe than we needed, giving plenty of room for picking and choosing, and the models were brilliant, especially the woman, Alli, who despite having to spend more than half an hour in a freezing swimming pool, teeth chattering, and later shivering on the sunset beach in a bikini pretending it was summer, never uttered a single word of complaint. Everyone pulled together to get the job done, and things couldn't have gone more smoothly.

Now we just need to see if the boss approves of the results. That could be the tough part.

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